I am a bone geek, I confess. On my bookshelves are a bunch of coffee-table books full of skulls, femurs, and xyphoid processes. They include From Lucy To Language, loaded with hominid remains, Human Bones for our current anatomy, and Fossils for a quick hit of Deep Time. An excellent addition to this sub-sub-genre is called, simply, Evolution. It’s loaded with gorgeous pictures of vertebrate skeletons (including this angler). In today’s New York Times, I have a photoessay with several other selections. You can check out a slide show here.

Ah! ,a href=http://gufodotto.blogspot.com/2007/10/evolution.html>Saw it some weeks ago and was planning to get it. I skimmed through the pages and the pictures are just wonderful… Didn’t know an english version was available, though… (it’s also definitely cheaper)

Yes, skulls and skeletons can be really fascinating. Especially fish have often such complex cranial structures. When I was this year at the Museum of Natural History at Vienna I photographed some very interesting skeletons and skulls of fish, including those of a monkfish. But the other ones were also really amazing, for example the strange skeleton of a sunfish, or the bizarre skull of a halibut. I posted some photos of them some time ago at my blog: http://bestiarium.kryptozoologie.net/artikel/einige-interessante-fischskelette/